Category: Book Review

Absolute must read for anyone even remotely interested in American politics. We live in a world where corporations, special interest groups and prominent individuals have the ability to pay money and influence legislation to be aligned with their interests. This book outlines the history, the current state of affairs and multiple solutions to the problem. The question remains: Are things too corrupt to ever be fixed?

Nothing makes me feel like swallowing an entire bottle of Flintstones vitamins more than having tons of work to do, but no excitement about doing it. We all know what it feels like to strongly resist work that needs to be done, but what makes us not feel like working? Is it truly laziness, or are we identifying it wrong? It turns out, what makes us procrastinate can come from dozens of places, some of which are deeply rooted psychologically. What Steven Pressfield did with this book is teach me to be an expert at identifying resistance and moving past it. If you do anything creative for a living and sometimes lack the motivation to get the work done, this book will help you in an astounding and concise way.

Something that always made me angry about philosophy was that I could read the most brilliant insights ever written on paper and never actually be able to utilize them. There is a big difference between understanding that it is pointless to allow things to affect you that are out of your control, and actually doing it. Patterns and habits rule your brain. If you could find a reliable way to change your patterns of thought, then you could technically make success a habit. You could be anyone you wanted to be. This book helped me understand the power of visualization and changed me in more ways than I can list. It also gives a ton of helpful exercises for getting results.

Type in “Entrepreneur Self-Help” or “Increase Productivity” into Google and every blog post available is some watered-down variant of the brilliance that is this book. What this book did for me more than anything is force me to question assumptions; social conventions pounded into my head with a jackhammer from the moment my feet hit terra firma the first time. For some reason, I was perfectly willing to question the way I thought about 99% of things in my life, but not the way I earn my living? Remove meaningless obstacles. I have read the chapter on productivity close to 100 times. No exaggeration. There isn’t a day that passes that I don’t implement something I learned from this book. Is there a more glowing review possible?

This is a book about fear. This book related to me on a plethora of levels. The terrible upbringing and constant feeling of scarcity that motives 50 cent to hustle and gain security in his life is something that I struggled with for years. What was crazy to me was how his situation bred in him a fearlessness that I had only heard philosophers talk about as a virtuous potentiality. Hearing him tell his story coupled with hearing about the evolutionary benefits that fear afforded us and how destructive they are in today’s world sent me into a highly focused place more based in reality.

I didn’t want to be 70 years old stocking shelves at a grocery store wondering why I didn’t achieve everything that I wanted to in life. I didn’t want to look at a can of Spaghettios and randomly have some epiphany that, if only I realized it decades earlier, would have made my life more fulfilling. Ultimately, I don’t have control over what happens to me, but I do have control over how I react to it. So much of what makes strategies work lies in execution, and so much of our ability to execute things well depends on habits of thinking drilled into us since childhood. I was terrified by the idea that I could have the most brilliant idea in the world, execute it poorly, and watch it fail miserably.

I deeply respect Richard Branson. When I look at someone like Richard Branson, not only do I see someone with a relentless work ethic; I see someone who is not ruled by destructive or inefficient patterns of thought. I love this book for two reasons. One: It does a great job of explaining seven habits of thinking that will allow you to effectively execute any strategy you have. Two: It is short. Perfection is not when nothing more can be added. It is when nothing more can be taken away.

Dale Carnegie first wrote this book in 1936. The fact that it still endures as a best seller is more powerful of an endorsement than I could ever give. The way we communicate, listen and relate to other people is a template. When did we sit down and design this template? I’ve always wanted to enrich the lives of others around me as much as possible. It bothered me that my method of communicating things that were supposed to make people happy could fail simply because I am communicating with techniques I’ve randomly picked up along the way. If you just read the title you might think this book is for losers that can’t get friends or sociopaths. This is almost the complete opposite. The book talks a lot about fostering a genuine interest in others and avoiding the divisive methods of conversation based on our own insecurities. If you can admit that you are not a perfect communicator, this book is worth its weight in gold.

One of the main things I have always loved about history is how it smacks you in the face with perspective. For a long time I complained about the situation I was in; angrily and enviously gazing at people with exciting or high-paying jobs and thinking that I was destined to a life of misery in these “terrible jobs”. I whined about how unfair it was that I had to save up to purchase a book I wanted to read while others got to circumnavigate the globe on their yacht. Then I graduated the second grade. Eventually I read this book and it changed the way I saw the modern human condition. With history and common sense it makes a compelling case for why instead of sitting around hoping to win the lottery, we should realize that we won it long ago; the moment we were born into this time period.